I let my instincts juggle the stress between pleasure and business. Both were practical, well-balanced personal interests. The thunderous night was young and the lady had nice earlobes and my apartment had that feeling about it. On the other hand the little fair-haired artist was in a jam and if I played fairy godmom bigger and better apartments and earlobes were in the offing from the agency. So I made the mistake of my life. I said, "I'll be there in half an hour," and hung up. "_Jim_-mee," the lady said. She was pouting, so I pinched her earlobe and patted her shoulders and bemoaned the tyranny of the business world and helped her into her coat. She went back to her own apartment. I tidied up the place, stacked the etchings in their corner, and took a cab outside. * * * * * I tossed that part of it in to make it clear that on the face and the underneath of it I could be readily classed as a normal, practical sort of a guy. I am. I shun unnatural, illogical things, like mysteries, or falsies, or counterfeit bills. Or fourth dimensions. I like an item right on the table where I can eye it and touch it and say, "That's a spade," or, "That's a buck." If there's water on Mars I'll believe it when I drink it, but until then I'll say, "So what's with Mars? It's one hell of a long way off." You see what I'm driving at? With me, James Gilbert Crisp, things are either down to earth or they're nowhere. I'd never admit messing around with something I couldn't put my hands on. If I touch it, I accept it, and if it's willing I'm able. "Jim!" said Willy, grabbing my hat. "Come in, come in!" I grinned at the little guy assuringly and shook the rain from my coat and tossed it on an easel. He shunted a chair at me and seated himself nervously, rubbing his neck, on the other side of a monster coffee table loaded with paints, bottles and oil-stained cartons. I was familiar with this studio, the working half of Willy's ranch-style chalet. The studio itself was as big as a barn and had more windows than walls; rain pecked at the glass in the northerly-exposed roof. Willy was tidy for an artist. Most of the boys on the agency's hook have la Boheme delusions that class them apart from us hucksters; their studios, which we see in spite of ourselves, _look_ like barns. But Willy's neuroses, although conventional, were bearable because in a lot of ways he was practical. He kept things where he could put his hands on them. Like the cigarettes he now fished from a box on the coffee table labeled 'caseins'. I shifted uncomfortably; these new-fangled chairs they twist out of wire will never replace the Morris. Willy drew furiously on the fag he had forgotten to offer me. It was taking him longer than usual to warm up to his subject. I shifted again. "What's the problem, Willy?" I asked.